Copus, J: This Rare Spirit

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was an English short-story writer and poet. Born in Bloomsbury into a middle-class Victorian family, her work was published and admired in both the UK and America. The first and only book of poems to appear in her lifetime, The Farmer's Bride, came out in 1916 when she was in her mid-forties. On the strength of it, Mew was awarded a Civil List pension, with recommendation from three of her most ardent admirers: Poet Laureate John Masefield, Walter de la Mare and Thomas Hardy. Julia Copus has published four collections of poetry, including The World's Two Smallest Humans (2012), shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award, and Girlhood (2019).